Quotes About Self-reliance

Laws" and "Rules" imposed on you From days of old renown. Are not intended for your "good" But for your crushing down. Then dare to rend the chains that bind And to yourself be true. Dare to liberate your mind, From all things, old and new. Always think your own thought. All other thoughts reject; Learn to use your own brain And boldly stand erect.

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members…. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

We must be our own before we can be another's.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

The less government we have the better.

The reliance on property is...the want of self-reliance. Men measure the esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property...(Essays)

Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself.

Learn all the handicrafts', said the Mahatma, 'that's the way to peaceful independence. If you use rifles and guns and tanks, it is a foolish thing.

A person who can handle himself can handle anybody!